Maximum Rewrite
by kiboeme
Summary: You thought this was just a better-written version of Patterson's books, right? Whoops. You were wrong. No, this story exists to tell you what really happened. Hold on to your seatbelts, friends. We're expecting some turbulence. Rated K-T for violence, mild language, and some disturbing content. Updates monthly.
1. Prologue (Kinda Not really)

The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything into perspective. Take right now, for instance.

 _Run, Max, run. Come on! You know you can do this._

I gulped in air, my lungs desperately straining for the oxygen to sustain them as I raced for my life. My mind had exactly one focus right now: to escape. Nothing else mattered, not the pain of my chest seizing as it struggled to breathe in, not the sting of my arms being scratched to ribbons by the brush or the ache of my feet filled with rocks and sticks. I could deal, as long as I put as much distance as I possibly could between me and the Erasers.

Erasers: giant wolf-human hybrids, usually armed and always bloodthirsty. I knew they existed, I knew they were dangerous. I hadn't known they would come after me so quickly. And if they caught me?

Yeah, that snaps everything into perspective. Just one second of being a priss meant my swift, most likely agonizing death in short order. A little scratch here and there doesn't matter so much with that in mind, does it?

 _Run. You're faster than they are; you can outrun them!_

I'd never been this far away from 'home' before—if you could possibly stomach calling the laboratory I'd come from home—and I was completely lost. At this point I could be in New Zealand and I wouldn't know. I was just running, running far far away from my own living nightmare. I could outrun them, could find a clearing with enough space for me to—

 _Oh, no._ I heard the unearthly baying of dogs through the trees as they picked up my scent, and my stomach did a backflip. I'd probably been tracked before by the Erasers, but I could outrun them. My whole family could, even the six year old. But we couldn't possibly run faster than a big dog.

Erasers were bad, but they'd just shoot me. I'd be taken back and dissected alive most likely, which was terrifying, but that was nothing next to being torn into by a dog, teeth sunk into my flesh and ripping me apart while the Erasers just leered at— _Enough._ Running was my priority. There was one thing I could do to escape the dogs, but I needed to get to a place where that could happen. Thinking about my imminent death was much less important than actually avoiding it.

See? Perspective!

Except the more I ran and didn't find a clearing, the closer they seemed to get. And then I saw it: dim light filtering through the woods in front of me. A clearing! I could see it! The trees were thinning out a little bit and there was light and…

I burst through the treeline, chest heaving and a cold sweat on every inch of my skin. I was ready to jump, but then:

 _No – Nooooo!_

I skid to a halt, arms flailing as I leaned back far enough to plant my butt on the dirt. This wasn't a clearing, not at all. In front of me was a cliff, a sheer face of rock that dropped down to a bottom I couldn't see at this angle. Way far down.

Behind me were Erasers and dogs, both psycho and dying to take me down.

In front of me was a canyon that I could definitely die jumping into.

Neither option was great. In fact, they both stank utterly and truly. The dogs had started yelping instead of just howls, and probably the Erasers were yipping a bit too. They'd found their prey: _moi._

I stood up and peeked out over the deadly drop, my heart speeding up more if that was even possible.

Yeah, I'd freaked out and lost precious running-away time avoiding running right off the cliff. But this wasn't even a decision. If you were me with the same shitty options, you probably would have done the exact same thing.

So I held out my arms, closed my eyes, put my toes on the edge of the rock… and I jumped.

There was an angry shout from an Eraser and a kind of hysterical shriek from one of the dogs. It would've been funny, had I been in any sort of place to find humor here. And then all I could hear was the sound of air whistling past my ears as I fell.

You might think I'm a little crazy. I probably could have run along the cliff for a while, ducked back into the woods, and kept my lovely little life going. Instead I committed suicide and bailed off the edge of a cliff.

Nuts, right? Wrong.

I took a deep breath, and then unfurled my wings as hard and fast as I could.

Thirteen feet across and pretty as the day is long, they caught the air like they were supposed to. I was suddenly yanked upwards by the force of the air like a parachute had been opened, jerking on my whole body and nearly pulling the whole wing out of its socket.

Wincing, I pushed downward with all my strength, then pulled my wings up, then pushed downward again. And I was flying.

I jolted upright in bed, hand over my heart. I know, it's so painfully cliché and damsel-y that it hurts, but I'm just telling things how they were. Hand over heart. My nightgown was free of tears, my arms and legs unscathed. I was safe.

I fell back on my bed, limp with relief. I hated that dream. It was always the same: running away from the School, being chased by Erasers and dogs, the cliff, and then suddenly wings, flying, escaping. I always woke up just like I had two seconds ago, feeling like I was an inch away from death. It happened once a week, minimum, and it sucked.

I needed to have a chat with my subconscious about that.

It was chilly outside of the covers, but I forced myself out of bed anyway and put on clean sweats. Clean as in only-worn-twice-so-far, anyway. Shuffling out of my bedroom, I noticed that everyone else was still asleep. I got some peace and quiet this morning, time to calm down from my little dream adventure and get a jump on the day.

I glanced out the hall windows on the way to the kitchen. I loved this view: the morning sunlight breaking over the crest of the mountains across the valley, the clear sky streaked with orange and pink, the deep shadows, and best of all, the fact that I couldn't see any other people. Here on this mountain, in our house built into the mountain, my family and I were safe. We could be ourselves, be free. And by free, I mean free as in not in cages.

You see, as you might have guessed from my dream, my family and I aren't exactly normal. In fact, we're not actually a family by blood, even. None of us have one of those, as far as we know.

There are six of us total. Me (Max), Fang, Iggy, Nudge, Gazzy, and Angel. We have strange names because we chose them ourselves. And we chose our names ourselves because we didn't really have names — or at least I didn't — until I was nine years old. We'd once had a 'father', but he disappeared a long time ago. We assumed he was dead, killed by the same people that wanted us kids. The same people who _made_ us.

Long story short, we aren't human. There's a lot of scientific gibberish that I could spout to explain, but I'll skim it down to this: we're part-human, part-bird. And all awesome, but that's not the important part here. What's important is that the bird bits in our genes have a very interesting impact on our genetics. What most people care about the most is that we can fly.

Yeah, remember that dream? The wings I always whipped out at the end weren't just the product of an overactive imagination (though I have one of those, too). I actually have a pair of them, and I know how to use them. So does everyone else in our little flock.

We were created by a group of sicko scientists at a facility in the middle-of-nowhere Nevada known by nothing other than 'the School'. The same people made the Erasers. We were raised there also, but it wasn't a normal upbringing. Because I and my family were raised in dog cages.

To these scientists, we weren't people, even though there's more human DNA in us than there is bird. Instead, we were experiments, inhuman _things_ to be tested, inspected, and dissected if they ever had the chance. They did horrible things to us, stuff that I honestly don't have the stomach to go over here. Just know that it was bad. That is, until we were rescued.

One of the scientists actually had a conscience. Jeb Batchelder decided that we deserved more than to be tortured experiments our whole life and somehow spirited us away one night and brought us here. Here, in this E-shaped house cantilevered over the canyon, we would be safe.

He was the closest thing to a parent any of us ever had.

A few years ago, Jeb left the house to get groceries one day and never came back. There was only one thing that could have made him abandon us: death. But we're still here, me and my five 'siblings'.

Without Jeb, we're on our own, and the responsibility of the family had to fall to someone. That someone was me. I'm the oldest, so I try to keep things running around here as much as I can. It's a hard, thankless job, but somebody's gotta do it. At least I kinda liked it sometimes, which made up for how much of a pain all the kids could be.

I was rustling around in the kitchen when I heard sleepy shuffling behind me.

"Mornin', Max."

I turned around to see Gazzy climbing into a chair and slumping down on the table. I went over to rub his back and dropped a kiss on his head. The Gasman was the only one who didn't really choose his own name. He'd been called the Gasman since infancy for self-explanatory reasons, so when the time came to pick his own name he just rolled with it. We usually abbreviate it to Gazzy though, because calling a kid Gasman is just, well, _weird_.

He blinked up at me with pretty blue eyes, trusting and dependent. He almost always looked at me like that, like I was a mom. And I guess, to some extent, I kind of was. "What's for breakfast?" He sat up a little and I backed away, resisting the temptation to smooth his hair. The fine blonde strands stuck up every which-way, like a fledgling's downy feathers. Gazzy's actual feathers seemed pretty smooth, though.

"It's…" I glanced furtively behind me at the mostly-empty cabinets. I'd have to figure out groceries again soon. "A surprise," I finished weakly. I had no idea.

"I'll pour juice," he offered, and my heart swelled. He was a sweet, sweet kid, and so was his six-year-old sister, Angel. They were supposed to be twins, but someone messed up and the scientists ended up with two very similar bird kids two years apart. We still considered eight-year-old Gazzy and Angel biological siblings, anyway. They're the closest thing to it, given what we are.

Soon enough, Iggy, the tall and pale, slouched in. Eyes closed, he fell onto our beat-up couch with perfect aim. The only time he has trouble with being the blind one (more on that later) is when one of us forgets and moves furniture or something.

"Rise and shine, Ig."

"Bite me," he muttered. I couldn't help smirking; on a different day, I might have said the exact same thing. I'd rubbed off on the kid — kinda. After growing up together, we all had the same sense of humor.

I was looking in the fridge with naïve hope — maybe the already-near-expiration-date eggs we swiped from the back of the grocery store hadn't spoiled? — when the back of my neck prickled. I straightened quickly and spun around.

"Would you quit that?"

Fang always appeared silently like that. Chalk it up to a combination of genetically-modified stealth and his whole emo kid vibe. He looked at me calmly, not even cracking a smirk. He was the most fully-dressed out of all of us so far, in black from head to toe. Like I said, emo kid vibe.

"Quit what?" he asked calmly. "Breathing?"

I was two seconds away from retorting and giving him a smack, but just then Iggy staggered upright, mumbling. "I'll make eggs."

I guess if I were more of a fembot, it would bother me that a blind guy a couple years younger than me could cook better than I could. But I'm not. So it didn't. I surveyed the kitchen quickly, checking up on how breakfast prep was going. Aside from Iggy shuffling around for ingredients and pans or something, Gazzy was pouring juice. Breakfast was going pretty well.

"Fang, you set the table. I'll go get Nudge and Angel."

The two girls shared the last bedroom at the end of the hall. It was the same size as the rest of them, but it felt much smaller because there were two of them in there. I pushed open the door to see eleven-year-old Nudge passed out in her bed still, tangled up in the covers and wings splayed out all over the place. She was barely recognizable with her mouth shut; when she was awake, it was the Nudge Channel: all Nudge, all the time.

I hated to wake her, and not just because she talked so much. She looked cute like that, so completely zoned out and dead to the world. Obviously she didn't have nightmares like I did, and good thing, too. Still, breakfast was here.

"Nudge, up and at 'em." I gently shook her shoulder, finding a place to sneak my body and arm through her tangle of limbs. "Breakfast in ten."

She blinked, her brown eyes struggling to focus on me. "Wha?"

"Another day," I announced. "Get up and face it. Or you could miss breakfast. More for me, I guess."

That did it. Groaning, Nudge levered herself into a bent up but technically upright position. I smirked at her curly mop, the tight twists of hair puffing out on one side and pressed flat where she'd slept on them. It would all be arranged perfectly before she left the room and the sleep wiped out of her eyes, revealing the pretty and very talkative girl we all loved.

Turning across the room, I picked my way through the messy floor to the curtain that was draped across a corner of the room. Angel always liked small, cozy spaces. Her bed, tucked behind the curtain Fang tacked up a few years ago, was like a soft nest—full of blankets, stuffed animals, and most of her clothes.

It was quiet, so I pulled the curtain aside and smiled. Perched inside like a chick was Angel, a sweet six-year-old technically the most 'advanced' out of all of us.

"Hey, you're already dressed!" I leaned forward to hug her. She squeezed me back tightly.

"Hi, Max." She leaned back and pulled her blonde curls out of her collar, turning around a little bit to show me her back. She unfolded her wings a little, revealing the line of open buttons between the two slits cut for her fifth and sixth limbs. "Can you do my buttons?" I turned her around a little more and obliged.

I never told the others, though maybe it was obvious, but I just loved, loved, _loved_ Angel. Maybe because I'd been taking care of her since she was just a baby. Or maybe because she's just so cute and loving herself; anyone would be hard-pressed not to like her, in my opinion.

"Maybe because I'm your little girl," she murmured, turning around to look at me. "Don't worry, Max, I won't tell anybody. I love you best too."

She threw her tiny arms around my neck and planted a somewhat slobbery kiss on my cheek. I hugged her back, hard. Angel's special already, what with how tiny and cute and lovable she is. But that's not the only special thing about Angel. She can read minds.


	2. Prologue &Chapter 1 (but real this time)

Okay, that's it. I am sick of writing that garbage. It is too sappy and idyllic. Too human.

'But Max,' you might say, 'I read the published version of this, and it all goes downhill pretty soon here.'

Look, _I_ read Patterson's version of this too. I know what happens in the books. And let me tell you a thing: compared to reality, those novels look like Candyland.

We thought he would be a good person to tell our story because he's such a prolific and well-known author. People eat his writing up. So we told him the basic premise of our story, sketched it out for him as much as we could (obviously we didn't want Itex to kill him for knowing too much), and advised him to take a little bit of creative liberty for the sake of plausible deniability or whatever. Then we skedaddled and let him take it the rest of the way.

Well, he screwed it up. Badly enough that I've decided to take this into my own hands.

I'm not a writer, so don't get too crazy about the technicalities here. This does not exist to entertain you or let you escape to some nice gentle bunny world. I just… I _need_ this. _We_ need this.

As long as this book exists, there is proof that we did too.

My dreams usually aren't dreams, they're memories. My brain does not want to create new stuff; all it can do is relive past experiences. Which honestly sucks a lot, since my past isn't something I'm particularly interested in seeing every single night, but that is the way it is: reliving over and over.

Except this one. I know this one could never happen in real life.

It's the same dream that is in the book. I'm running, running, running, but not to provide data or to increase my stamina. In the dream, I run because I am trying to escape. Then the Erasers corner me, and they seem like they actually want to _kill me_. Not kill me in a murderous-instincts-bred-into-them way, but actual orders to get rid of me. And then I'm flying away, and they can't catch me.

Yeah, that's a real laugh. It gets even funnier in a sick way if you psychoanalyze it (which, by the way, Patterson tried to do before I told him where to stick it).

I've only been able to come up with that one fictional dream since Jeb died.

Jeb is the one who got us out of the School and brought us here. 'Here' being an estate hidden away in the Rockies. Here we learned to fly and to fight. Everything we know about history and society and logic and practical skills, Jeb taught us. He took us away from the testing and labs and exhaustion and pain, and then he taught us how to be self-sufficient. He freed us.

And then, two years before the start of all this bru-ha-ha, he disappeared. When he did not come back, we assumed he died. We didn't grieve. We simply moved on, not wasting our time and energy on something we could not gain from. Just like he taught us.

Everything was more or less dandy at this point, which is where you guys enter. That's where Patterson started, that's where I'm starting, because that's when everything fell apart.

Fang and I woke up at dawn to go sparring. We did it every morning, bringing one of the others along with us once each week to train them. Once every cycle, however, there was a day when it was just the two of us.

Daybreak struck early in the summer, and we lived on the east side of a mountain, so the sun already hovered on the horizon when we reached our practice clearing. I took a deep breath of the clean air as I stretched backward and heard the soft sounds of Fang doing the same. For half a second I let myself slip into a reverie, wondering why I could hear mating calls so late in the year. The male had to be awfully—

 ** _Wham._** Reverie, broken by a feathery clubbing. Man, wings _hurt._ There was a lot of muscle in those puppies. I staggered forward a step, wrapping my brain around what happened. Fang, wings extended, just met my glare calmly. Actually, he looked kind of annoyed.

"Hey Max, that isn't why we're out here." I wished I had justification to retort. But I didn't. He was right. But then he kept going. "If you slack off, soon I'll be better than you."

I dropped my knees into a crouch and opened my wings, spreading my feathers out to their full span. "Oh yeah? Really think you can get one over on the one and only, first and greatest?" Fang just smirked.

"Depends."

"On?"

"Whether you've gotten better in the last week."

He didn't give me a single second to switch gears before launching himself at me. I ducked to dodge the fist flying at me and found his knee waiting for my jaw down below. Stars popped in my vision. A beat of my wings propelled me away from him, but the moment my feet touched the grass again I was throwing my weight back toward Fang. I pummeled into his abdomen with my head and we both went down. I tucked my wings back and rolled away before he could grab me.

Fang shifted onto his side facing me, his eyes narrowed. Just like he'd done to me before, I met his glare with a cocky smile.

"Who's the best again?" I crowed.

Lightning fast, his handful of dirt whipped out at me, throwing debris in my eyes. Before I could react he was all over me, trying to wrestle me down. I put up a fight and clipped his ear and cheek with my fist, but size won out. _For now._ When my vision finally cleared he was on top of me, pinning my chest and wing with his knees and my throat with an elbow. He was also smirking like he'd won. Cocky bastard.

I popped one of my eyebrows, skeptical of his supposed victory. He had me underneath him, but Fang himself wasn't very stable, and he'd left my arms free.

His forehead twitched an instant before I moved. I mustered all my strength to jerk my wing and chest, destabilizing him enough to shove him off. I followed him over and grabbed at his body while he was winded, wrangling him into a hold he would have a hard time escaping unless he broke something.

Even though the tussle left me breathing heavy, I had to gloat after all the smack he talked before. "Better luck next time, buddy. They didn't improve _this_ model until Nudge." He grunted his assent.

With that urge delightfully satisfied, I finally let him go. We both stood and dusted ourselves off, picking pine needles from each other's feathers.

Oh!, I almost forgot. I gotta clear up some misconceptions you might have from the books about our physiology.

One of Patterson's creative liberties was to portray us as very normal. I don't mind – it makes us more marketable or relatable or whatever. If I'm telling you the honest story though, with no holds barred for the shitty stuff, then I'm also not going to sugarcoat _us._

Short version: we ain't human, friends.

Slicing, dicing, and recombining genomes to make a chimera doesn't really work. You end up with a monstrosity halfway between both species and usually in a lot of pain for as long as you keep it alive. It is definitely not possible to make something that is totally human except for wings. The Flock was built from the ground up. Our genomes are completely customized to have the best of everything, but the scientists weren't that concerned with appearances as long as we worked. Unless we try to blend in on purpose, it is pretty obvious that we aren't standard kids.

You'll get a better sense of what I mean as we go along. The biggest thing to know is the wings.

They're _big_ , somewhere in the vicinity of three times our height in length. Each of us was designed to look like a certain bird – I'm a golden eagle, Fang is a raven, Iggy's some sort of seabird, etc. etc. Our wing shapes and feathering look like our bird-y cousins'.

We maintain our feathers like hair. If we don't, it can be difficult to fly or just plain uncomfortable. We preen each other a good amount to reach those annoying middle-of-the-back spots. It's kind of intimate. I guess if every person had wings it would be considered something romantic or sexy, but for us it's useful and necessary.

So Fang and I wrapped up our training with our feathers preened, cleaned, and fluffy. We chatted while we walked back home for breakfast.

"Hopefully Iggy actually took some initiative this time and made breakfast without us telling him to," Fang muttered, his voice dry. I couldn't help but agree.

"Yeah, no kidding. I was thinking, I want to see if we can brush up on flight as a group today. We haven't been out in a while."

"Sure, sounds like a good idea. I know Angel still isn't very good at—" He broke off mid-sentence, suddenly falling dead silent and stopping in his tracks. I paused too and reached a hand out to tweak his forehead.

"Still in there?"

" _Shh_!" he hissed. The look in his eyes seemed pretty serious, so I shut up and listened for whatever Fang was hearing.

My heart dropped into my stomach at the quiet thrum of helicopter blades growing louder as it approached. Helicopters _never_ came up here – that's why it was a good place for us to be. The noise echoed off the mountains surrounding us so much that I couldn't tell where it was coming from, and then suddenly it was in our field of vision just across the valley.

"Did you see what type it was?" Fang asked. I nodded. Our eyes met and without saying a word we agreed on what had to happen. Flying through the trees was too risky and above them too visible, so both of us took off running toward the house.

When we busted through the door, the rest of our flock was already sitting down at the table. Our arrival triggered four identically confused faces.

"… Max?"

"Were you guys seriously that excited for breakfast?" Nudge asked.

It smelled like pancakes. I mentally cursed the stupid helicopter for ruining an excellent morning.

"We need to get out of here," Fang explained. Again we were met with confused looks.

"Get out of here?"

I finished swearing just in time to offer one sharp word: "Helicopter."

 _That_ elicited some new reactions, ranging somewhere between fear and confusion. Iggy was more on the frustrated end of the spectrum. "You're sure it's not someone who got lost?" I shook my head.

"It was an unmarked transport chopper. This isn't just some weekend rental that went off the map." Whoever manned or sent this thing knew what they were doing. They almost definitely were not here for fun, and there was only one un-fun thing that could be considered business around these parts: _Us_.

"These guys are here for a reason. We can't just hunker down until they go away. We need to be smart. Leave your stuff. Iggy, get rid of breakfast evidence – we're getting out of here."

Jeb told us we could never be caught. Anyone who found the Flock wouldn't even think twice about sticking us in cages at a zoo or a laboratory.

He was the one and only human who hadn't seen us as lab rats or spectacles to ogle. He was the only one I would ever trust not to abuse us. Whoever was in that helicopter was no exception to Jeb's rule and my personal rule – never trust someone outside the Flock.

Each of us perched ourselves in the branches of a tree nearby the house, like so many panthers watching silently from the canopy. Fang made our house look disused while I checked that everyone was secure. I left Angel and Gazzy together in spot, and found Iggy last.

"You're in charge while Fang and I go check things out, got it?"

"No way!" he protested, leaning toward me with a scowl. "I'm coming with you guys."

"You are not."

"Why the hell not?"

"Iggy," I sighed. "Dude, you can't do reconnaissance very well if you're _blind_."

A kind of pained, kind of pissed look crossed his face. He wasn't born blind – somebody jacked up an experiment on his eyes, and he lost vision permanently. The scientists wouldn't have let that kind of imperfection survive if we'd stayed. Iggy had been slated for elimination before Jeb busted us out.

"You'll be able to hear someone coming better than the others. You are the best early warning system there is, and we will need that if they manage to find us. Capiche?"

He was still scowling, but he nodded. Fang came out of the house then, and I glided down from the treetops to meet him.

"Ready?" He nodded.

Jeb paired each of us up and trained those pairs together. Fang and I were partners in that training. With no speaking or motion signals between us, we could fly in perfect synchronization. We did that now, skimming the tops of the trees together. Each of us silently scanned the ground on our side as we flew toward where we thought the chopper would be. For a while, neither of us saw anything other than the trees. I saw a rabbit.

Then a little trill from Fang made me look over at his side. At first I thought he was pointing out the glint of metal through the trees – the helicopter itself. When he banked and I followed, though, I saw what he _really_ signaled for, and my whole body felt cold.

Winding through the trees was half a dozen men carrying various equipment. But not just any men. Not just normal men. Everything about them was predatory, feral. These were not people.

 _They were Erasers_


	3. Chapter 2 (also legit)

_**AN:**_ _To whom it may concern,_ I've decided to schedule _Maximum Rewrite_ to update monthly, on the 3rd of each month. I hope that you continue to enjoy reading – and please share this fic with your friends! This chapter is where the first bit of excitement happens, and the ride only becomes crazier from there. 3

* * *

Let me explain something: we the Flock were, are, and forever will be terrified of Erasers. Why? Because back at the School where we were raised they tried to kill us all the time.

That's the way they were made, Jeb always said. They are programmed from their genes up to try and kill anything they're ordered to. The School used them to test our responses to stress and see how fast and long we could go when our lives depended on it. In retrospect, we were never in actual danger – the scientists never would have let them damage us for real – but that didn't change the instant panic a glimpse of them caused.

Fang sped up once I'd seen the Erasers, and we flew away from them. When we'd flown enough of a difference that they probably wouldn't hear us, we landed in the upper branches of an evergreen to take a breather. All my muscles were taut as a wire, and I felt my hands shake when I grabbed a branch for stability.

"What the hell are Erasers doing here?" Fang hissed. I glanced over at him. His face seemed angry, but I could tell that he was trembling too.

"I don't know. Jeb said we were well hidden. Do you think they know where the house is, or are they just combing the general area and hoping to get lucky?"

He shook his head. "I have no more information than you do, Max."

I took a deep breath and commanded my body to chill. Panic wasn't a good option right now. Flaky bark dug into my skin where my fist clenched tight around the branch, and the sharp pricks helped to ground me. I felt my heartbeat slow down a bit. The shaking stopped.

"Given that understanding the situation isn't a viable option right now, we have to switch to defense. Keeping the Flock safe is our priority." Fang nodded his agreement as I continued. "I'll go back to the house and warn the others. You check out the helicopter while I get a spot to watch the Erasers. See if we can find out what they're up to here. Sound like a plan?"

Again, he nodded, and we leaped out of the tree.

I went to Iggy first. Although blind, he was only marginally younger than Fang. I was the oldest member of the Flock – the first successful human-avian hybrid the lab created and, in my humbly biased opinion, the best to date. Anyway, Iggy is in charge when neither Fang or I are around. He didn't look at me as I glided on to the branch beside him, but that didn't fool me. Vision aside, Iggy had some of the most developed senses out of all of us; he'd definitely been aware of me long before I found his spot in the tree.

"So?" he asked, speaking quietly.

"Badness. The helicopter didn't bring wayward people. It brought Erasers." Iggy's eyes widened, and for a heartbeat he looked nauseous. I didn't blame him.

"Fang is checking out the helicopter they came in, and I'm gonna see what I can learn from the monsters themselves. Warn the kids and listen for a signal from me." I gave him no time to sort through the wariness and determination warring on his face before I rubbed him gently on the shoulder and hopped off his branch.

I flew back into the trees, trying to glide instead of flap as much as I could – flapping made noise, and I needed stealth more than anything right now.

Like us, Erasers aren't purely human. Where our genomes are an engineered blend of human and various avian genes, theirs are a hodgepodge of human and canid. So, wolves, dogs, foxes, and so on. Technically raccoons are canids too, but I don't think they made any raccoon hybrids. Anyway, point is: if the Flock's hearing and sense of smell is sharp compared to a human's, an Eraser's could cut diamonds.

They were trying for stealth too, but I knew these woods well enough to find them. I landed in a tree about half a mile downwind of them and made my way closer by hopping between branches. They moved through the underbrush without speaking to one another. Probably so they could listen for us, I realized with a chill. Whoever sent these guys meant business.

Well, if the Powers That Be wanted to play ball with the Flock, who was I to refuse them?

My count showed eight Erasers in this group and four more a hundred yards away. Two for each of us – easy enough. Anything like the Flock or Erasers cost a pretty penny to engineer and grow, so if we could deal some damage to this crew, or even kill them, I doubted their handlers would send any others after us.

I followed them until they came across one of our trails in the underbrush. If they kept going it would lead them straight back to the house, so now was the time.

After checking that the Erasers wouldn't be able to see me from their vantage point, I lifted my chin to let out a shrill scream. Coming from my throat it sounded almost exactly like a bird's; the Erasers wouldn't be able to tell the difference. But my Flock would, and they'd know what it meant: _attack_.

The Erasers paused to listen, and within a hot second I heard my family rushing this way. Iggy and Nudge suddenly appeared as they leaped over a thicket of thistles. Nudge immediately plowed her shoulder into an Eraser's gut, dropping him with a grunt. Angel and Gazzy flew in on their heels and dropped on the Erasers below them with kicks and punches. Even though it was two-on-one favoring the Erasers, the attack out of nowhere left them completely overwhelmed.

I jumped in right as they arrived, intentionally colliding with one of the un-engaged Erasers and knocking him down even as he shouted into his radio for the four-man backup squad. He tried to claw at me when we landed, but a measured punch to his temple took him out of the fight before he'd dealt more than a scratch.

Max: 1, Erasers: _nada_.

Another one rose up behind me with a knife in hand. My vision narrowed in so that the only thing I could see was the blade in his hand – chances were pretty good that he knew how to use the thing, and you can't expect to win a knife fight with fists. That instant of inattentiveness was all the opportunity he needed to attack me. I didn't even realize he moved until I saw the knife itself swinging toward me. I scrambled backward, clutching the slash in my collarbone, and he followed me.

My hand smacked something hard and coarse lying on the ground. I scrabbled around blindly for a grip on the thing and missed at first, but then managed to grab the log and chucked it at the Eraser just as he started to lunge for me. It collided with his face, and before he could react I rolled to standing and lashed my foot out at the knife to send it flying. I pummeled him with my fists until he recovered from the bark assault, and then the two of us exchanged half a dozen more blows before my knee connected with his jaw. The click of his colliding teeth and the sharp pop of neck whiplash preceded the thin whimper he made as he crumpled.

I just stood over him for a second to catch my jumpy breath, trembling from the adrenaline of the fight. Now that those two were down, I paused to check in on my Flock. Right as I looked over to them, Fang – whom I guess managed to get his butt over here while I was fighting – dropped the last standing Eraser. Nudge and Gasman squatted on either side of an unconscious body and started to pat it down as I walked over to them all. I counted bodies, living and dead, as I went along.

… _six, seven, eight._ There were eight. Just eight.

"Don't get too relaxed, guys."

Nudge looked up at me with an eyebrow raised at my warning. "Why not, Max? These guys are all out for the count, unless you think they're faking it or someth—"

"There was a second group nearby them on backup," Iggy explained, rising from where he'd been resting against a tree.

I nodded and added on: "I noticed them earlier, but I lost track when we started fighting. Ig?"

"Me too."

Now Gazzy piped up. "You think they would still attack us, even though they saw how we can totally kick their butts?" He punctuated his proclamation of butt-kicking by throwing a pine cone into the ground like a victorious athlete. I couldn't help but smile a little bit, because he was right: we _had_ kicked their butts.

"Before, we didn't think they would come track us down way out here either. And yet it happened anyway." Gazzy opened his mouth to protest, but reconsidered and snapped it shut before any noise came out.

The pause was Fang's cue to look up from picking dirt and pine needles out of Angel's hair and fix his eyes on me. "So, now what?"

"Even if we can't let our guard down, we should go back to the house and clean ourselves up." My hand jumped up to my collar on reflex to brush the cut the Eraser's knife left on me. Not too much blood flowed from it at that point, but it stung to touch and my fingers came away damp. "After that we can— _wait._ Nobody make a sound."

All movement from the Flock completely stopped. I think Angel might've even stopped breathing. In the quiet, what I maybe-kinda-sorta thought I heard became clear as a bell to my ears: the sound of helicopter rotor blades.

The Erasers intended to run away and report back on us. No way was I going to let that happen, not on my watch.

"Hey, Max, wait!" Fang shouted at me as I snatched a knife off the closest unconscious Eraser and sprinted into the woods.

Before too long the chopper sound changed slightly as they started lifting off – the instant there was a clearing in the trees, I snapped out my wings and also took to the air.

I caught up to it right as it cleared the tops of the trees and didn't waste any time folding my wings in to dive-bomb the half-open door. The Eraser standing just behind it got acquainted with the sole of my shoe as I smashed it into his furry face. He fell backward with his clawed hands wrapped over the broken nose I gave him. Momentum carried me into the wall opposite the door – and that collision _sucked,_ by the way – but I was on my feet again before the two other Erasers in the cabin registered what just happened. How's that for an element of surprise?

I lost said element pretty quickly. The Erasers jumped to their feet, teeth bared and eyes flashing, and in less than half a freaking second I was completely cornered by opponents who were much, _much_ better armed. Crap. It's a classic, you know? I only realize that this was stupid _after_ I can't back out of it any more.

Somehow amid the endless stream of punches assailing me, I managed to squirm my way close to the door. I braced myself and then roared wordlessly at the top of my lungs. The Erasers were startled enough to stop hammering me for a split second, and in the pause I swept my wing at them with as much force as I could throw behind it. They dodged, but now we had enough distance between them and me for Max to get the hell out of dodge.

My jump to freedom was cut short by the harsh clap of a gunshot and a brutal flash of pain through my wing and the top of my right arm.

I jerked forward from the sting on reflex and suddenly found myself dropping out the helicopter door, arms flailing for purchase and something to grab. My hands caught the helicopter's skid, jerking my tumble to a halt and probably pulling at least one arm muscle in the process. The brand new holes in my body seared with agony from the effort and my vision wobbled and dimmed dangerously. _Shit, shit, shit_ —

– I glanced up at the sound of a clatter from the cabin, expecting to see the bad end of a rifle pointed my way again. Instead I saw one of the Erasers attacking the other, growling as he ripped the gun away from him. I didn't understand what was going on between them and frankly I didn't care enough to know; I just had to get out of there. But I was gulping for air just to _breathe_ , let alone try to think of a solution here. Everything was so overwhelming with the hot metal under my hands and the ear-pounding rotor blades and the wind whipping me around and so much _pain_ in my body from the bullet and the beating. Wings were basically out of the question with the bullet wound, and the helicopter had too much altitude for me to just drop – damn, that gun-shot _hurt_ – but maybe I could—

" _ **Max!**_ "

Fang! I glanced downward through my watery vision to see two vaguely-bird-kid-shaped blobs keeping pace with the helicopter from beneath, just far enough away that they didn't catch a downdraft from the rotor blades. I understood their plan for being where they were: I couldn't fly, but I could definitely fall.

 _Alright, Jeb, time to see how well you actually trained us_.

My hands opened to detach me from the metal skid, and I dropped.


End file.
